


Breathing For Two

by luninosity



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Allergies, Apologetic Coffee, Belated Epiphanies, Canada Is Cold, Confessions, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Protectiveness, protective!Michael
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 01:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James is possibly being too casual about his own health concerns. Michael rather impressively over-reacts, and belatedly figures out why. And then there is apologetic coffee and first kisses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathing For Two

**Author's Note:**

> The fault of an interview in which James mentions being allergic to horses even though he likes them, plus my back-to-back watching of two movies in which he has to ride. Clearly we needed fic with protective Michael learning about these things. Title and opening lines courtesy of The All-American Rejects’ “Dance Inside" (it was almost New Found Glory's "Hold My Hand," which in fact was the working title, but "Dance Inside" came up last-minute on my playlist and fit perfectly!).

_now I'm twisting up when I'm twisted with you_   
_(brush so lightly)_   
_and time trickles down, and I'm breathing for two_   
_(squeeze so tightly)_   
_I’ll be fine, you’ll be fine_   
_this moment seems so long_   
_don’t waste now precious time_   
_and we’ll dance inside this song_

“Canada’s very cold, isn’t it?”

“That’s because it’s snowing, James.”

“The snow is cold.”

“Yes,” Michael says, patiently, “that’s the point,” and then leans over to put his arm around James’s shoulders anyway.

Canada _is_ cold. They’ve been running around in the woods, which in theory resemble their Russian relations, and filming all the Shaw-hunting scenes, for a week now. And Michael likes the woods, and the snow is an enticing change of pace from the American South and tropical islands. But James, who has discovered that snowdrifts exist that’re taller than his own height, gets cold, too. And that’s unacceptable. James should never be cold.

“I miss summer.”

“It still is summer. Summer exists even in Canada, you realize.”

“I think the phrase Canadian summer is an oxymoron. Aren’t you cold?”

“Not really. Anyway, it’s symbolic. Hunting Shaw and Emma Frost, in the middle of winter…” They’re meandering back to their trailers, amid all the trees and sharp-edged air. The path is actually relatively clear—the production team’s made sure of that; no one wants cast or crew to fall and literally break a leg—but the afternoon is quiet, shading into evening, and there’s no one else around, through some minor miracle, the universe tucking him and James away into their own shared pocket of togetherness as they walk.

“All right, yes, I can see the symbolic point. Still cold.” James detaches himself from Michael’s side to hop over a fallen tree branch. Michael’s arm feels empty, for a minute, until James comes back and inserts himself into place again. “You do feel warm. Like a radiator. Useful.”

“I’m happy I can be of service to you, James.” And then he wants to smack himself on the forehead—really, he’s just said that?—but one of his arms is occupied and the other hand is stowed away in his pocket and James doesn’t appear to’ve read any other meaning into that statement regardless.

James grins. He’s taking extra-long steps, apparently just to toy with the snow, which plays along even though he’s so recently been complaining about it. Little white puffs drift up around his feet, merrily, celebrations of every encounter of boots and wintry fluff. Michael can’t help watching. The movements’re mesmerizing.

They wander past the animal handlers, taking a very gleeful German Shepherd for a walk. James waves; Michael does too, belatedly. She’s a nice dog, even though she’d been growling at them on camera in the back of a truck, earlier. James’d sneakily fed her pieces of chicken, at lunch, and she’s gazed at him with utter worshipfulness ever since.

She wags her tail at them. James detours over to pet her, until Michael notices that those fingertips, not covered by Charles’s pointlessly impractical gloves, are turning bluish-white, and plucks James up out of the snow and gets them walking again.

And maybe he’s holding James’s closest hand a little too tightly, trying to rub some heat back into it, but neither of them says anything about that, though James does smile, looking up at him, when Michael wraps his own fingers around the shorter freckled ones. “She’s absolutely a sweetheart, you know. I do like dogs. And cats. And turtles. And—”

“James, you like _everything_. And everything likes you.”

“That’s not true. There’re horses.”

“…what?”

“Not that I dislike horses. Horses are completely likable. I can ride them, even. But they don’t like me. Or, more accurately, my allergic reactions don’t like them. Kind of severely.”

“You— _severely_ —since when are you allergic to anything?”

“Since always, probably. I just never knew until it happened. And, by the way, on location, with Robert Redford shouting that you’ve only got three hours to finish that scene and five layers of authentic costuming on, is not the time or place to discover that you can’t breathe, in case that ever happens to you.”

“You—James—” All at once he can’t breathe, either. James is allergic to things? Hasn’t told anyone? Hasn’t told _him_? He can see that moment, all too horribly clear: James stopping mid-sentence, glorious voice arrested in his throat, eyes going wide with the struggle for air and then closing. James on the ground. Not moving.

James stops playing with the snow. Circles around to stand in front of him, eyebrows going up, concerned. “Michael?”

“You didn’t tell me you had allergies…”

“I didn’t think it’d be a problem. It honestly is just the one thing. The one animal. You know what I mean. It’s a fairly specific situation, after all. Not that hard to avoid.”

“You didn’t know. Until it happened. There might be other things.”

James sighs. “Come on. My trailer. Now.”

“James,” Michael says, and then doesn’t have any words to follow that name, and so lets himself be pulled along by determined hands. He could protest—he has no clue what James has in mind, and he’s very far from being in the mood to be good company, feeling unnervingly frozen inside, as if all the snow’s crept into his chest when he wasn’t looking—but he can’t argue with those brilliant eyes.

In the coziness of the trailer, all cheerful lamps and faded brown furniture and scatterings of Star Trek novels, the cold starts to thaw, just a fraction. James is here and those hands are warm when they push him down on the sofa and the world hasn’t ended, after all.

“Wait here,” James says, and starts hunting through stray bags and script towers and the pockets of discarded sweaters. “Okay, I know it’s around, somewhere…”

“Um…what’re you looking for, again?”

“This.” James pulls out a small case, waves it at him, triumphantly. “Here, catch.”

“This is…” He gives up. Stares at James, confusedly. “What is it?”

“Oh. Um, EpiPen. You know. Epinephrine injection. I have two, but I have no idea where the other one is. Kind of ridiculous, I know, I haven’t needed it yet, but it’s contractual, I’m supposed to have them when I’m filming. In case.”

“In case…in case you go into anaphylactic shock and—you could _die_ , James!”

“Well, that’s supposed to be what this is for.” James gets up, comes back over, sits down beside him. “Better?”

“Not really…shouldn’t you keep this with you? Or at least know where it is?” He touches the tiny injector, as it lies there in its box, so innocuously. So small. But it could save James’s life. If James let it do its job.

“I did know where it was. Well…more or less.” James grins, runs a hand through his hair, not as ashamed of that sentence as he ought to be, and abruptly Michael feels his own hands shaking.

He shuts the box. Sets it down on the couch cushion, carefully. James is still smiling like that makes everything all right and it’s not all right, he hadn’t _known_ , and how can James be amused, how can James treat this like a joke, when he might stop breathing and disappear in Michael’s arms because no one could get help to him fast enough?

He’s on his feet. Hadn’t even noticed himself standing up. “James, you idiot.”

“I…what? Michael—”

“You—you don’t take anything seriously, not even this, not when you might die, and you don’t even—you don’t think about what that would mean, what I would—” His heart’s trying to fling itself out through his rib cage. To break his chest open, and show James exactly what that would mean, how much he’d bleed, everywhere, inside and out, if James died. He can’t lose James. He _can’t_.

“That’s not fair, I’m not—you want me to spend every day thinking, _oh, god, this morning I might finally have that fatal allergy attack and die_? How would that be any better?” James is standing up, now, too, right beside him, annoyed and exasperated and clearly clinging to the last shreds of patience. Those familiar eyes, the color of Highland lakes in sunlight, snap with irritation and affection.

Of course James is right. He’s not being fair. James does take things seriously, Michael knows that, he’s seen it for himself, the way that James gives himself to his craft, to each role, every character, knowing them from the inside out and loving all their flaws. James is incredibly talented and so damn dedicated to everything he does and everyone he loves.

James loves the world, and the world loves him back.

And Michael loves James. Inarguably, entirely, body and soul.

It’s not even a realization. Only a truth. Blindingly simple. His heart’s beating, he’s alive, he’s in love with James.

And he can’t watch James forget to care about himself like this. Someone has to be there for James. Has to tell him when he’s being this fucking stupid, because he’s irreplaceable, and if James dies the world might not stop spinning but it’ll never be the same.

“It’s not better,” he says, “it’s not, but you can’t ignore this, either, James, you _can’t_. What if you—do other people know about this? Matthew? Anyone?” Anyone who might know what to do, confronted with the unthinkable, the words he can’t say.

“Um…probably the lawyers, somewhere…it is in my contract…and now you?”

“What the _fuck_ , James!” Plus a few more colorful obscenities, which don’t quite make the flimsy trailer walls blush, but only because they’re made of plastic.

“Okay…” James now looks mildly alarmed. About time.  “Okay, you might be right, and I’m sorry…”

“Good!”

“But now I’ve told you, right? So you could help? If I needed that, which I still think is incredibly unlikely—”

“Of course I’d fucking help,” Michael says, and he’s practically shouting, and he doesn’t care, “of course I would, but you have to care too, you have to care if you’re here because I need you to be here and I don’t want to lose you and I love you!”

James, who’s been staring at him more and more incredulously throughout that tirade, and has had those lips parted to answer, closes them, abruptly. Takes one single step back over to the couch, and sits down.

“You…what?”

“Oh, god,” Michael says, weakly, and takes his own corresponding step, in the direction of the trailer door. “I—you—I’m sorry, I think I should go, I have to—” One more step. He can’t turn around. Not with those shocked blue eyes staring at him.

“Michael…you…did you just say…”

“Yes,” Michael says, because he can’t lie, not to those eyes, “yes, I did, I do, and I’m sorry, I’m sorry I yelled at you, it was just, I just had to, I shouldn’t’ve—” And then James blinks, long eyelashes sweeping down over astounded blue, and the interruption frees him to move, and he spins around and bolts out the door before James can stand up or look at him again or say _I’m sorry_ in return.

 

He stays awake all night. The hotel bed is deliciously soft and inviting and the pillows try their best to cuddle him and there’s no possible way he’s going to be able to sleep. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees that blue gaze, endless as the indigo sky. Pictures James sinking down onto that supportive sofa, tiny black medical kit next to his hand.

Hears his own voice blurting out that unthinking confession, epiphanies he’s only suddenly had himself. Now they’re out there in the world. Roaming free.

He called James an idiot. And shouted at him. And maybe someone needed to, because James obviously isn’t concerned enough about himself, but it’s so very much not Michael’s place to say so. They’re friends. Only friends. And even if James might maybe conceivably possibly ever have felt something more, that’s more than likely gone too, because James isn’t going to want the person who’s yelled at him, flung unprompted admissions of love in his face, and fled the scene.

The night’s very cool and clear. Normally he likes the bite in the air. The crispness tells him that the world’s awake, too, alert and aware and poised to see what’s going to happen.

Michael’s not sure he, or the world, wants to see what’s going to happen, when he encounters James again in the morning.

The morning’ll be cold, he thinks. James gets cold so easily. And never wants to admit that, either, but the enormous sweaters and kidnapped pairs of Charles’s gloves proclaim it anyway. James is probably cold now, even under every layer of blanket on his bed. The blankets will hold him and try to keep him warm, but their efforts might not be enough.

He thinks about James having chilly hands. About how immobile, how cold, those fingertips would be, in his, if James ever—no. He’s not having those thoughts. He’s _not_.

He gets out of bed and smokes two cigarettes even though he’s trying to quit and the night air makes his fingers numb within seconds, and nothing helps, so he gets back into the bed and just lies there hopelessly wondering what he can do to make things right, until the first streaks of dawn appear and inform him that it’s time to sit up again.

 

He doesn’t see James in the frigid hotel lobby, because James has a later call time, today. Not much later, but James is the opposite of a morning person and is probably taking advantage of every second of sleep he can have. Still, the morning feels a little more lonely, the car a bit more empty, when it comes to collect just one of them. Michael catches himself unconsciously glancing at the unfilled space beside him, and feels the absurd urge to pat the seat for reassurance. The car’s, and his own.

If he gives in to that urge, just once, under the pretense of dropping this morning’s script notes, no one will ever know except the two of them.

It’s another snow-encased morning, the world all frozen and glimmering like a fairy tale, an ice realm, beautiful and cold. The sun sends brittle rays through pale blue sky to reflect light off all the shining surfaces, and Michael takes a deep breath of frosty air, and then one more.

Stability. Breathing. Right. He can do this.

The air is cold. And James _will_ be cold, when he gets around to turning up on set. And they’re already out of coffee.

There might be so many things that Michael can’t fix, can’t take back, can’t change, right now. But he can at least find James coffee. James deserves to be warm. James deserves an apology.

He spots one of the personal assistants, and starts giving very detailed, and impassioned, instructions. And hopes that it’ll mean something, if not enough.

He tries not to panic, when he realizes that James is running late.

Michael knows he’s late, because he knows precisely what time James is meant to be there that morning, because he’s had both their schedules memorized for weeks, because he likes to know where James is and what he’s doing. Because he likes to be there when James finishes, to see blue eyes light up when they land on his, to offer drinks or dinner or decompression in someone’s hotel room, after the too-long days.

He always offers. He always wants to offer. Which, if he’d ever stopped and thought about it, would’ve been a good indicator of his feelings about James.

James always says yes, but Michael doesn’t know what that means. James likes spending time with him, of course, but James likes spending time with people in general. And James might not like spending time with him now, considering how the last time they’ve spent together ended.

James is even more late, now. The minutes crawl by. Michael stares at the snow. Curses it for being so omnipresent and unhelpful.

As if in answer, a drop of melting ice plops off a low-hanging tree branch, and lands on his head. The world, he decides, is a cruel and coldhearted place.

When James does arrive, with rumpled hair and blinking those eyes because he’s forgotten his sunglasses and the light is blinding, Michael knows right away, because he’s bribed each and every intern and personal assistant with promises of martini rounds at some future date. Eventually he’ll end up getting half the production staff drunk on vodka and gin, but that’s a problem for later. Right now, James is wandering toward the wardrobe department, and Michael’s there waiting for him along the way.

James pauses mid-step. Even his hair looks trepidatious, registering Michael’s presence. “Ah…good morning? How long’ve you been here, anyway?”

“Good morning to you. Um…I had to be on set an hour ago. Wardrobe consultation. Helmet adjustments. I think they’ve decided Erik doesn’t need to see, just navigate by echolocation. Like bats. Or did you mean this spot specifically?” Breathe, he reminds himself. Not babble.

“I…think I’ve forgotten my question. Is that coffee?”

“It is. And it’s for you.” He holds it out. Forgets to exhale even though he’s just told himself to.

James takes a sip. Blinks. Several times. “Blueberry?”

“You said yesterday that you were missing the summer…”

“So you found me blueberry coffee.”

“Technically I found you coffee with blueberry syrup in it. Um. James?”

“Thank you, but you didn’t have to.” But James is smiling, he’s almost sure. The expression’s right there, flickering around the corners of that mouth, the depths of those eyes.

“I did. Because I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—it’s your life. I mean…it _is_ your life. If you want—you don’t need me to tell you how to take care of yourself. I do care—you know I care, I—but I still shouldn’t’ve yelled at you. Or said—what I said. You didn’t ask for that. Any of that.”

“I don’t know,” James says, thoughtfully, and takes another sip of summer-flavored coffee. Then licks his lips. Michael attempts not to watch, and fails. “I’m not going to say I wasn’t surprised. And you didn’t exactly give me a chance to answer.”

“…I’m sorry about that, too.” Not for feeling it. He can’t regret feeling that emotion. It’s the only warmth he’s got left.

He can regret the way he hurtled it at James uninvited, though. Impositions. The ending of a friendship, just like that. At least James hasn’t thrown the coffee at him yet.

“I’m not. Not sorry you said it, I mean. I got you something, also. That’s why I was late, actually. Here, hold this for a minute.” James hands back the coffee. Michael swallows, accepts it, and tries not to feel as though that’s some sort of rejection.

It’s not. He knows it isn’t. Or he thinks he knows.

“You…got me something? You didn’t have to—”

“No, I’m pretty sure I did have to. You weren’t wrong. Not exactly tactful, but not wrong.” James pulls an extremely familiar object out of his pocket. Holds it out, displayed on the palm of one hand. “I _should_ know where they are. Just in case. So I have one here, and one back at the hotel, because I did find the other one, but…I bought an extra one, this morning. I thought maybe if you wanted…you could keep one for me, too.”

Michael opens his mouth. Can’t talk. Manages, “James…”

“Because,” James says, looking a little nervous but resolutely sincere, “you were right, about keeping them close, wherever I am, and I, um, want to be wherever you are. Anywhere you are. So…”

“James,” Michael whispers, again. Still no other words.

James smiles, crooked, hesitant, under the pale sunlight. Reclaims his coffee with one eloquent hand, and leaves the other, with its offering, hovering between them. “If you don’t want to—I mean, you don’t have to, I know I’m not—”

“You’re not _what_ ,” Michael says, and puts his own hand out, and picks up James’s gift to him, slowly.

Not because it’s heavy. It isn’t. Only slow because he’s marveling at the way blue eyes change and shift and brighten, when he takes it out of James’s hand. When his fingers brush against the soft skin of James’s palm.

“Um…I’m not very organized and I’m good at annoying you and I’m too short for you and I’ll never be a morning person and—”

“James,” Michael says, one more time, and reaches out, wraps an arm around him, drawing him closer, so they end up pressed together, breath mingling in the cold. James doesn’t argue. Smiles, instead, sunrise behind blue-sky eyes. Michael thinks he might want to see that particular smile forever.  “I love that you’re short. I love that you can’t make a coherent sentence in the morning without coffee. And you don’t annoy me.”

“I—”

“This…” He holds up the case. It beams at them, benevolently. “You bought an extra one. For me. You said you want to be with me. Anywhere.”

“I did.” James grins, and puts both arms around Michael’s neck, heedless of the coffee in one hand. “I didn’t say something else, though. And I should’ve.”

“What—”

“You tell me when I’m being an idiot. You hold my hands when I’m cold. You have magical coffee-related superpowers. And you worry about me like—no one else ever has, you know. Not really. I think I like that. I like you. I love you. And you love me.”

“Yes,” Michael says, “ _yes_ ,” and then he’s kissing James, or maybe James is kissing him, and the world tastes like blueberries and coffee and snow and laughter, and he can see everything he’s ever needed right there in those blue eyes.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I'd Be Lost Without You (Watching Over Me)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1538069) by [LifeLover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LifeLover/pseuds/LifeLover)




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